


Lies Only Grow

by GraduateGraduate



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Betrayal, Black Widow Ops, Coerced Sterilization, F/M, Forced Sterilization, Friendship tested, Lies come to light, M/M, Minor Fantasizing About an Adult, NSFW, Red Room, Sterilization, Unreliable Narrator, brain washing, sex against the door, wolf spider ops
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-27
Updated: 2018-03-27
Packaged: 2019-04-13 16:48:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14116677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GraduateGraduate/pseuds/GraduateGraduate
Summary: Steve finds out Natasha knew Bucky better than she let on.Flashbacks paint a picture of Natasha’s early life in the Red Room, and just how well she knew the Winter Soldier.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve always loved the part in Winter Soldier where Steve and Nat are eyeing each other up, trying to decide if they can trust each other, and I love the friendship that blossoms when they do.
> 
> But what would happen to them when the truth came out?
> 
> I’m posting this as a Stand Alone, but it might end up being incorporated into In Repair at some point. I haven’t decided yet. Hope you enjoy it!

“You never told me you knew Bucky.” Steve’s face had grief and betrayal creased across it. “You were made in the same place?” He was trying to make sense of an incomprehensible thing.

“I didn’t want to change how you saw me.”

Natasha’s voice was smaller than Steve expected. His eyes darted up to meet hers, both sad.

“You know it wouldn’t have-”

“Made you see me as a victim?” Natasha quirked her head, her voice back to its usual stubborn strength.

Steve snapped his mouth shut.

Natasha looked at her feet. “I wasn’t _hiding_ it from you. I just didn’t know how to tell you. And I don’t like talking about it.” She paused before exhaling an, “I’m sorry.” She looked at him, eyes flitting between his, trying to see if he believed her.

The tension didn’t fall out of his shoulders the way she was used to. His brows were still furrowed together as he chewed on her words.

“Okay,” was all he said. He turned and walked away.

She didn’t follow. She knew he needed space. She’d really done it this time.


	2. Chapter 2

It was 1991 when Natalia was brought into the KGB. She’d been a feisty kid with bright, intelligent eyes and a stubborn smirk. Of course, that’s not how the KGB found her. She was covered in soot, choking on smoke, eyes pink and watering from all the ash in the air; entirely lost in the orange-glowing chaos.

She’d been plucked from the flames by a kind man. He’d fed her, cleaned her up, and given her a warm place to pass out. He’d gently told her that her parents were dead and had left her alone and pretended to not hear her when she cried herself to sleep for several nights in a row.

It wasn’t until she’d run out of tears, having entirely exhausted the well within her, that her bright eyes had returned. She had a burning curiosity that had her sneaking books from his library to read in secret when she was supposed to be asleep. Her stubborness returned in full force: Natalia did not do anything she did not want to do. One day, her guardian sat her down and told her she was special and he had a very special place for her to go to learn.

Seven-year-old Natalia was excited. She was smart and capable. She was a survivor. And she was going to go somewhere that was going to help her grow up to realize her full potential.

The Red Room was a tough place to grow up, but Natalia barely noticed. She was too busy excelling. Some of the other girls struggled with the rigorous pace of the classes, with the reading and writing assignments sandwiched tightly between sparring practices and brutal fitness training. But Natalia thrived. The structure was good for her, knowing what she would be doing with every moment of her day. Working her mind to fatigue and then her body to match. Waking up the next day having learned many things - sleep helping her to process both new neural and muscle memories.

The one thing that was never a constant was the instructors. The schedule stayed the same, but you never knew who would be giving the lessons from one day to the next. And they didn’t have names. Natalia didn’t think anything of this, she barely had a name. It was only ever used if she had disappointed. Either preceded or followed by a disdainful clucking or a swat.

Natalia’s favourite instructor was one of the Wolf Spiders. Seven year old Natalia had no idea how old he was when she first met him. He was an _adult_. And that could’ve meant he was anywhere from 15 to 45 from where she was standing. He was an intimidating form: tall and broad, with a steel arm that glinted dangerously in the sun. But he had kind eyes, and he called her _Natalia_ with a soft endearing smile and told her she was doing a good job. And he never hit her. He was the only one who never hit her. Even when she deserved it.

It was always a treat when he was the fighting instructor a few days in a row. It didn’t happen often: once every other year, maybe. When she was sixteen, he showed up for the first time in three years, and Natalia’s face glowed with excitement. She still couldn’t tell how old he was, but he didn’t seem to have aged at all since the last time she’d seen him. She was excited to show him what she could do now, after three years of practice. She was faster, she was trickier. She was light on her feet and she could use her whole body against her opponent. She’d taken down five of her sisters between then and now, and she watched him expectantly, waiting for him to see her and smile, his grey eyes crinkling in the corners.

But he didn’t. He surveyed the class - looked right at her - without a hint of recognition. Natalia’s face fell - but not into disappointment. Into determination. Of course he didn’t remember her. It had been three years, and she’d grown a lot. But she would make him remember her.

On the second day, the Wolf Spider was smiling at her and clucking her name fondly as she bested her sisters in sparring matches.

On the third day, he was calling Natalia up to demonstrate new moves in front of the class. She lost her focus, for just a moment - she meant to follow his hips, the centre of his gravity, to see where the next punch would fall. But she got lost, just for a moment, in his scent - an earthy musk, sweat bursting forth and running down an otherwise clean body - and the way his long hair fell across his eyes as he fought, and he got her square in the jaw. It was the kind of move a rookie was unable to dodge: telegraphed from a mile away. But it got her, and she was knocked straight back on her ass. Her sisters smirked, sharing a glance that marked her as the fresh prey. She had quickly forced herself to her feet, and other than one quick, instinctive hand to the jaw to make sure it was still in one piece, Natalia refused to acknowledge her injury.

He had raised an eyebrow, a silent _Are you okay?_ that she refused to acknowledge beyond the curtest nod of her head as she blinked back hot tears welling in her eyes from the sudden combination of impact, shock, and humiliation.

Natalia entered the sparring room on the fourth day expecting a new instructor. The Wolf Spider had never taught them for more than 3 days in a row, and after her embarrassing misstep the day previous, she was relieved that someone new would be guiding the lessons.

But there he was. Tall and beautiful and looking at her with sympathy she didn’t want. She refused to meet his eyes the entire class. She was extra annoyed with him when he pulled her up to demonstrate again. She was fuming, but she took it all and funnelled it into focus. Not only did she never give him the opportunity to hit her, but she also seized the opportunity to knock him off balance, using her entire body’s momentum as she set up a reverse scissor kick and pulled him to the floor with her. She got up in a smooth motion to kneel on his chest and bring her prop knife to his throat.

He grinned at her after the surprise receded from his eyes. “Хорошая работа, Наталья!” _Good work, Natalia!_

She let him up, helped him to his feet. Adrenaline pumped through her body and she let the heat of his words mingle with the warmth of triumph. She’d have dreams later that night, about a tough fight with a man with a terrifying metal arm and kind eyes. Their sweat started out as their own, but as she used her body to pull his to the ground, gaining the advantage, their limbs intertwined, their sweat mixing; she panted heavily, the knife pressed to his throat. She knew she was supposed to go in for the kill, but she kissed him instead.

The dream had gotten muddy after that. But she’d awoken: legs tangled in her sheets, feeling hot and flushed, looking forward to seeing the Wolf Spider in the ring again today, but determined to do so without blushing.

She was sure her disappointment was palpable when the man who walked into the ring at the start of class wasn’t him.

Natalia tried to put him out of her mind. She knew how the cycle went: he’d be back in a year, minimum. Maybe he’d never be back at all. But most nights, if she dreamt, she dreamt of him. He cheered her on from the sidelines. He reminded her of the move she’d learned last week that could gain her the advantage in this fight. And he praised her when no-one else would: _Good work, Natalia!_

When she was seventeen she went in for her annual medical. The doctor had flipped through her charts and asked her a series of questions before giving her her annual injection. She didn’t know what was in it, not really. But they’d given her one on her first day, promised her it would keep her healthy and help her grow up to be fit and strong. In her ten years at the Red Room, she’d never once come down with anything - not even the common cold. So the injections continued. And every year she was just as healthy as the last, if not quicker and more fit.

As she put her top back on and began to gather her things to leave, the doctor fixed his gaze on her and asked her to take a seat.

She did.

“You are,” he flipped through her chart again, speaking in thick Russian, “Seventeen? Becoming a woman now, Natalia,” he frowned as if a woman was an undesirable thing to be.

Natalia grimaced along with him. She didn’t want to be reminded. In one of her classes, she’d been taught a woman’s job was to breed and her place was in the home. _She_ was meant for much more than that. She wasn’t being trained to be a _Woman_. She was being trained to be an _Agent_. She was smart and talented; she could take down a man twice her size by using her speed and his weight against him. She could lie convincingly without so much as a tell. She could be anyone she wanted to be: Natalia Romanova, Laura Matthers, Yelena Belova. She could be no one and she could be everyone. To be a Woman was to be a Mother. And to be a Mother was to be one thing above all things to one person at all times. It was restricting and limiting and she wanted nothing to do with it.

“It is time to choose, Natalia.” The doctor pulled some forms from a folder and lay them out before her. “Who are you?” He quirked his head to the side as he laid out her options. “Are you a Woman? Or are you a Spider?”

Natalia didn’t even hesitate as she took the pen he offered her and signed off on the invasive procedure forms.

“Good,” the doctor nodded approvingly as he added the forms to her file. “Then let’s get started.”

  
Natalia had been laid up in bed for a week following the procedure. She only had two tiny incisions in her abdomen, and she wasn’t in anywhere close to the most pain she’d ever been in, but it was the nicest the nurses had ever been to her. They brought her a never-ending supply of butterscotch pudding, made sure she was comfortable, and ensured that she took the full time necessary to heal.

She wasn’t used to it: being given time and space to heal. She was used to ignoring a wound to finish a fight. She was used to the daily ache of her body. She’d forgotten what it felt like to not be in pain.

By the fifth day in bed, she was getting stir crazy and restless. And as the pain faded, first from her muscles - the usual ache releasing its hold of her body - and then from her incision sites, she had a harder and harder time not reflecting on the choice she’d made. The choice _she’d_ made. It was _her choice_ , and _she’d made it_.

So why did it feel like something had been taken from her?

She was itching to get back into the ring with her sisters, whom she was certain were pulling ahead of her in their training.

Little did she know, they were all laid up in a row of beds, walls isolating them, all wrestling with the same questions she was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Natalia is an unreliable narrator. Nobody ever _deserves_ to be hit - especially a child.
> 
> My Russian translations are straight out of Google Translate. If you have a more accurate translation for me, I’d love to switch it out.


	3. Chapter 3

Steve hadn’t spoken to Natasha in four days. When she walked into a room, he walked out. She’d about had it with the silent treatment. She’d given him time and space to come around. To understand why she’d kept her secrets; why she hadn’t told him everything at once. But he wasn’t coming around.

“Steve!” Natasha called after him as he left the meeting room as quickly as he could once Fury was done speaking.

“I don’t want to talk, Nat.” Steve hunched his shoulders and stuffed his hands in his pockets as he slipped out of the room. He stalked away from her, trying to put as many bodies milling in the hall between him and her as he could.

“What was I supposed to tell you, Steve?” She was yelling at him as she tried to make her way through the maze of people. “Was I supposed to tell you he was made in the same place I was?! Was that going to make you trust me?!”

Steve turned on her. “ _Make_ me trust you? Is that all any of us are to you, Nat? Pawns in your extensive game of chess? We’re only on your side for as long as you need us, and you only tell us what we _need to know_ to get us there, right?”

The people in the hall were taking notice now. Some of them ducked their heads, trying to physically remove themselves from between the two shouting agents. Others slowed to listen as they moved to wherever they were going.

“That’s not what I meant, Steve, and you know it,” Nat huffed. “There wasn’t _time_ , Steve. Fury had just been shot. I didn’t know if I could trust _you either._ ”

“And what about after, huh?”

Natasha shook her head and sighed, more to herself than at him, because he was right. There _had_ been time, after. Enough time that she’d gone through that folder from Kiev and removed any mention of herself from it before she had passed it to him. Enough time that she could have sat him down and told him everything she knew of the man he was going after, but instead she’d kept herself out of it.

Because she’d wanted to go with him. She’d wanted to help him find The Asset. She’d wanted to be the one to save him. But she also knew it had to be Steve. Every time she met the Wolf Spider again, it was like he was meeting her anew. The end result was always the same - he was very fond of her and they had an undeniable chemistry that always bubbled back to the surface. But he had _remembered_ Steve in a way he had never remembered her. If anyone could bring him back, it was Steve.

“That’s what I thought.” Steve pressed his lips into a thin line, turned on his heel, and continued down the hallway.

“I loved him too, Steve.”

At first she thought he hadn’t heard her, but the backs of his ears flushed pink, and after another step he faltered and stopped.

He turned towards her. “You -What?”

“I loved him too.”


	4. Chapter 4

Natalia didn’t run into the Wolf Spider again until she was twenty-one. The Wolf Spider had faded into a childhood crush - the kind you expected to be a little embarrassed about when you realized how much older than you they’d been at the time, or discovered that time had not been kind to them.

But when they crossed paths again, he hadn’t appeared to have aged a day.

It didn’t take long for her crush to settle in anew. But she was much older this time, and she found herself not just wanting him to notice her and say kind words to her like he had in her childhood fantasies. No. Now she wanted to find out just where that metal arm ended and he began. She wanted him to strip off her clothing and let her show him just what she could do with her body.

He was present at her graduation day. Watching silently from the sidelines. Their prop knives had been replaced with the real thing, and there could be no hesitation in any of your movements. To falter was to die.

Natalia’s heart fell when her partner was called to the ring. Tatania was her closest sister. She was her confidante. The only one she’d have ever shown vulnerability or admitted any feeling of weakness to. They had been sparring partners, study buddies, since Natalia had arrived. They were thick as thieves, and they had often stayed up a little too late whispering about the missions they would be sent on together. They didn’t know what the future held, but they knew that they would have each other’s backs.

Except the Red Room wouldn’t allow that.

Natalia didn’t allow the way she felt to appear on her face. But Tatania did. Her eyes widened, as if she’d misheard. And she didn’t move right away. They had to call her name a second time before she began to move towards the ring. Natalia already had the upperhand.

Yelena fought well. They knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses so well that the fight looked more like a choreographed dance than an actual battle/fight.

Natalia could feel his eyes on her as she dodged and circled her friend. She realized she was fighting Tatania differently because they were evenly sized. But she should still be able to use her weight against her. Natalia found a gap and threw her whole body at it, using the reverse scissor kick, once again, to pull her foe to the ground.

Tatania struggled to suck in air, the breath knocked clean from her, as Natalia pinned her to the ground. She knelt on top of her, one knee on the ground, one knee on her stomach; her left hand kept Tatania’s shoulder pinned to the floor, her right pressed the knife to Tatania’s neck.

Natalia had seen enough of these ceremonies to know that to look up now, to search for permission to just let her go, would get her executed along with her friend.

So she kept her eyes focused on Tatania’s, which were wide, like an animal caught in a trap, watching death come for it. _I’m sorry,_ Natalia thought. And then she pressed the knife into Tatania’s thin skin and pulled it smoothly across her throat.

Natalia stood, wiped her bloody knife off on her pants before sliding it back into her boot, and forced herself not to cry, as Tatania’s blood seeped across the floor.

She stepped back to the sidelines, attempting to stare straight ahead without making eye contact with anyone. But the Wolf Spider had caught her eye. He hadn’t smiled, but he had given her a solemn nod.

She bit the inside of her cheek and refused to let tears rush to her eyes, nevermind spill over. She could taste her own blood as she broke the fragile skin in her mouth with the effort to keep from crying.

She’d been the first to spill blood today, but she’d not be the last. The Red Room graduation was not complete until the graduating class had been halved and the room lived up to its name.

  
The Wolf Spider had knocked on her door later that evening. She had been tenderly pressing her bruises, assessing just how injured she was, when there was a knock on the door. Her breath hitched when she saw who was standing on the other side. He held up a manilla folder and opened his mouth to ask if he could come in, but before he could get the words out, she grabbed a fistful of his shirt and pulled him to her, pushing the door closed behind him. Emboldened by her win earlier, and struggling with the absolutely unknown void that was her future, she pressed him to the door and kissed him.

He tensed under her touch, and for a second Natalia thought she’d made a grave mistake. She pulled back for a moment, intending to step back and reassess, but she could hear the folder tossed to the side, and then he had grabbed her by the waist and turned their bodies so that she was pinned between him and the door. He crushed her lips with his, and her hands found purchase round his neck and in his hair.

Her hands found their way to the hem of his shirt, pulling it over his head before she worked her way out of her own pants and panties while he kissed her. As her hands moved to his belt, he pulled back. He was panting gently, catching his breath, his hands planted firmly against the wall on either side of Natalia’s face. She was boxed in, but not at all trapped. As she fumbled with his buckle and undid the top button of his pants, his eyes searched hers. There was an unspoken _Are you sure?_ in his steel-grey eyes.

She nodded once, and he pressed his mouth to hers again. Their kissing was sloppy and frantic, rushed and heated. She wound her arms around his neck and he picked her up effortlessly, helping her to wrap her legs around his hips. He used the wall to help balance her as he slid a hand between his torso and her thighs. She could feel his thumb pressing against her clit, his palm pressing warmly against her lips. He circled his thumb roughly, and she rocked down against his hand as he slid his fingers between her lips, teasing but not entering her. He kissed down the side of her neck, waiting until she’d thrown her head back against the wall, moaning gently, rocking against his palm fervently, before he pressed a finger into her.

She sighed gently before moaning, “More,” into his shoulder as he nibbled her neck. He slid a second finger in to join the first, still rubbing her clit in even circles, pressing and pulling his fingers until she was quaking and clenching around him.

She muffled her moans, burying her face into his shoulder, and then finding his lips with hers. Her kisses got longer, deeper, as the tension fell out of her body.

He pulled his fingers from her and freed his hard cock from where it had been straining against his pants. He lined the tip of himself up with her, and slid home, his hands digging into her fleshy hips.

She swallowed his gutteral moan and responded in turn. Time seemed to slow and quicken all at the same time as he fucked her roughly against the wall.

At some point he’d carried her from the door to her bed. He’d tossed her there and been quick to follow. He’d fucked her into her mattress, her head thrown back, hands clinging to skin and metal alike, until she’d hooked her legs around his waist and used his weight against him, flipping him under her so she was on top.

She leaned forwards, rocking down on him, keeping him snug inside her as she moved. She supported herself on her hands, pressed into his chest; the fingers of her right hand playing absentmindedly with the space where his metal arm was attached. Her eyes were closed, her teeth clenched as she fucked him. He watched her, and let his hands wander up her body under her shirt: from her hips to her lower back up past her waist until his metal one held her round her ribs, thumb tucked under one breast as his flesh hand groped roughly at the other.

They fucked in near-silence. Only the sounds of their laboured breathing and escaping moans between them. Natalia’s entire body seemed to tense as she sped up her pace, fucking him until there was barely a rhythm going anymore. She cried out as she finally lost herself to the pleasure again, coming undone on top of him. He was so close, as she clenched and released around him over and over. He grabbed her roughly by the hips and thrust up into her until he followed her over the edge.

When she came back to herself, she was lying with her head on his shoulder, his metal arm wrapped around her back, hand rubbing her back gently beneath her shirt. She leaned over and kissed him once more before extricating herself from him and wandering to the washroom.

She turned the shower on. “What’s in the folder?” she called over the sound of the water warming up.

She could hear him buckling his pants back up in the other room as she stripped her shirt off and stepped under the flow of hot water.

“Your first mission,” he said. She could hear her apartment door open, and then, “We leave at 0800.” The door clicked behind him as he slipped out.

Natalia smiled to herself under the cascade of water. That had been a hellish day. But of all the ways to end it, there had been worse options. Part of her felt fifteen again, pining after this much older, intensely attractive, incredibly dangerous man. But she was twenty one now, every year it seemed like she caught up to his age a little, even if that didn’t make any logical sense. And having graduated meant she was almost as dangerous as he was.

She told herself she was the one in control. She wasn’t sure if she was reminding or convincing herself.

***

Their first mission went smoothly. They sat shoulder to shoulder in the aircraft as they were flown into the middle east. They had a couple targets to take out. No one super high up who would be missed, but individuals integral enough to the oil trade to cause a disruption in the system that could be taken advantage of. Neither of them said anything about the night before, but every single night, one of them ended up in the other one’s bed before morning came.

He stopped coming around after they got back to the Red Room. And Natalia’s pride was too big to go looking for him. She refused to get emotionally attached to him. He was her childhood crush who happened to be a good, stress-relieving fuck. That’s all he was. And if he wasn’t coming around, if he didn’t want to fuck her or if he’d been sent on another mission, she wasn’t going to go looking for him.

It was what it was.


End file.
